What makes a good high-jumper? If you ask Pioneer Valley Regional School senior Danielle Devine, she may tell you to try Celtic dancing.
Devine will join some of the best jumpers from the state at Sunday’s New England Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
Devine finished last weekend’s MIAA All-State meet tied for seventh place after she cleared 5 feet, 2 inches. She was one of nine jumpers to clear 5-2, and four more went on to clear 5-4, including the winner.
This weekend Devine will be one of 42 athletes vying for the New England title (she’s ranked 23rd based on last week’s jump). That leaves her five inches shy of Westbrook (Maine) High School’s Nyagoa Bayak and Bloomfield (Conn.) High School’s Monique Anderson, the top two seeds who come in at 5-7.
But just qualifying for the New England meet was what Devine had really been after. She had been to the All-State meet a couple of times in her career but hadn’t advanced. She said that once you get this far it’s fun to be around so many great athletes, and being part of that is a great feeling.
It’s a long way from where she was when she joined the outdoor track & field team as a seventh-grader.
At that age, Devine, like so many other athletes her age, tried her hand at a number of different events in order to see where she excelled.
“I didn’t know what I was good at, so I tried a bunch of events and that was the one I stuck with,” she recalled. “We kind of needed someone to do it.”
While Devine said she wasn’t very good her first year, she was good enough to qualify for WMass, although she still laments not clearing the initial height at the postseason meet.
However, being among the best in western Mass. was still a thrill for Devine, who says she has always paid attention to who is seeded at the top of the high jump and remembered their names.
That next season (eighth grade) Devine once again qualified for the WMass meet and this time she advanced to the state divisional meet. That same season, Devine also competed in the long jump and triple jump, two events she also performs well in.
Devine said that she’s not sure what has made her such a strong jumper, but points to dancing as a very good possibility. She said she grew up dancing, and still dances two nights a week at Celtic Heels in Greenfield, which is located on Main Street across from Wilson’s. She performs Irish step dancing at the school, which she said is “kind of like Riverdance but not really.” She also does ballet at the school.
“Dancing is something I take pretty seriously as well,” she explained. “I think you just kind of get muscles that help you jump when you dance so much.”
Devine also plays soccer in the fall.
Her best jump of all-time came as a freshman when she cleared 5-4 during the outdoor season. She said she hasn’t jumped as well the past two outdoor seasons, although last year she suffered an ankle injury that cost her the indoor season and still nagged her during the outdoor campaign. She is hoping to clear 5-4 again this spring, her final year of high school track.
Devine plans to study Criminal Justice in college. She said she is unsure of exactly what she wants to do, although she has had a dream since she was young.
“I usually say I want to be a police officer,” she said. “I’ve been saying that since elementary school, but now I see other opportunities in the field.”
She has narrowed her college search down to a pair of finalists, and she has talked to both track coaches at the schools (one a Division II school, the other a Division III).
Despite all of her success, Devine said she still get nervous when she jumps. That may be why she wastes little time doing her jumps. Even when she has already won an event and is the only jumper left, she never takes all the allotted time she has between jumps.
“I just like to go pretty quickly,” she said. “The officials know it and they joke around with me. Once it’s down to just you, you get three to five minutes to jump, but I just go and get it over with.”
This spring will put the wraps on a successful career for Devine, who has certainly made her mark on the Pioneer track & field program.
“She’s really a heck of an athlete,” Pioneer indoor track coach Jim Bell said. “She’s a really nice young woman. There’s really all sorts of good things to say about her.”